The Work
A Broad Canvas, Many Hands
The house tells, convenes, records and makes. Each part of the work serves the same end: that the inheritance is understood and handed on.
The Public Voice
What Is Demi Princess?
Demi Princess is the public voice of Aadivamsha. It asks what it means to be noble in a republic.
Its answer is that nobility today is not a rank. It is a way of carrying what one has been given. Through conversation, essays and a guide to the royal houses, Demi Princess lets India’s royal families speak for themselves, in the first person and without intermediaries, about what they inherited and what they are doing with it.
Conversation
Crown Unscripted
A member of a royal house in conversation with members of other houses, on record and at ease.
Essays
The Noblesse
The families writing in their own hand about duty, memory, loss and renewal.
The Guide
RajParivar
A plain guide to the words, the history and the houses of royal India.
The Gathering
Convening
Aadivamsha brings together people who rarely share a room: those who study the inheritance and those who carry it. Each gathering takes up one question and takes the form the question asks for.
The Record
Research And The Archive
The house records what is written and what is only remembered: testimony, recipes, techniques, songs, plans and papers. Each record is made with consent and kept so that it can be found again, by anyone, in any language the house can serve.
In Time
Things Made
Where the work leads to something worth making, the house will make it: a publication, an exhibition, a film, an object. Nothing is made for its own sake and everything made is made with those whose inheritance it carries.
The Method
How A Piece Of Work Moves
- 01
Listen
Every piece of work begins with a conversation, with those who study a subject and those who carry it.
- 02
Record
What is said, shown and made is recorded with consent, to a standard that will still serve in a hundred years.
- 03
Convene
Where a question needs more than one voice, the house brings the right people to one table.
- 04
Publish
What is learned is shared: in conversation, in essays, on the map and in the archive.
- 05
Make
Where the work leads to something worth making, the house makes it.